Report 1449
Special Report #1449 Skillset: Knighthood Skill: Wounding Org: Serenguard Status: Completed Feb 2016 Furies' Decision: Already reviewed and/or by Ieptix in announce #2589. Problem: Currently, warriors appear to be struggling with building wounds. As described in report 1425, calcise and dendroxin has been demonstrated to assist with wound building, however it presents a very messy design with balance issues. Currently, there is a notable discrepancy under the new system between one-handers and two-handers, namely that one-handers can choose between delivering two poisons and two wounds, two afflictions and two poisons or one wound, affliction and a poison. Two handers can only do two wounds and a poison or one affliction and a poison, leaving them behind on their one-hander counterparts in flexibility and output. In the old system, this was compensated for by allowing for two-handers to have an inherent wounding bonus, but under the new system this is not present. This report attempts to offer solutions to address the problems with the new wounding system. 0 R: 0 Solution #1: The current +1/+2 wounding system may be too restrictive. Consider broadening the range to e.g a maximum of 200 on a body part instead of 20. Have two-hander strikes do 2.2x wounding compared to a one-hander's single strike. Start ice curing at an equivalent of 90% of a one-hander's single, unmodified strike. These numbers are initial suggestions and can be more easily tweaked over time. This solution is meant to allow for more flexibility with balancing as it allows us to have minor gradations in wound accrual and curing and find a balanced sweet spot. 0 R: 0 Solution #2: Have the wounding on two-handers do 2.6x the amount of a single one-hander's strike. Have ice cure about 9 wounds (90% of a one-hander's single unmodified strike). Player Comments: ---on 2/19 @ 01:20 writes: Supported. An alternative scale would be to multiply the wounding values of everything by 5 (so a scale of 100) but really the numbers don't make that much of a difference. ---on 2/19 @ 23:33 writes: Yes. I like the multiply by 100 scale, so that we can actually tweak things on a more gradual scale vs. right now. Currently, an increase of 1 point would be a 100% bonus, vs. after this it would be just a 10% bonus. ---on 2/22 @ 04:38 writes: I think it's best to stay away from as much RNG as possible. A significant amount of RNG has been removed from warriors already, so while I'm not opposed to a more broad system. I think we also really need to fix the discrepancy between two handers and one handers here. 2.2x seems really small, considering that one handers get the benefit of 2 poisons each time as well as the ability to wound/afflict in a round. I think something more like 2.6x-2.8x would be appropiate here. The versatility of one handers is much much greater and 2.2 just isn't enough to adjust for that difference now. Before hand, they two handers gave out better afflictions faster (like PB being able to collapsenerve where BM required hemi) and that bonus is gone, as well as the wounding bonus. I can go for 2.6x and adjust from there. I also thing ice should cure a static number of wounds each time. I'm leaning towards 9 wounds at this point unless we adjust ice balance (but that has other issues, even if calcise/dendroxin is removed, damagedlegs/arms will still be around) ---on 2/23 @ 19:56 writes: I'm okay with Sidd's suggestion so solution 2. ---on 3/2 @ 15:28 writes: As final remarks, combined with REPORT 1425, this is, in my opinion, *the* most important report I've put up for the continued health of the warrior archetype. While I understand the +1/+2 wounding system is a design we wanted to keep and work with for its simplicity, I think demonstrably and mathematically, it cannot work. The +1/+2 wounding system is too restrictive to fine-tune wound curing and accrual rates. At the moment, wound building is not viable without dendroxin/calcise on an efficiently curing opponent (which brings very undesirable balance problems on its own, as outlined in 1425). A near 1:1 ratio on wounds delivered and cured per warrior balance as it is now is mathematically unsustainable, especially considering that modifiers do not deliver wounds. The other possible points of adjustment if we were to keep the +1/+2 wounding system, would be ice balance or warrior balance times, which don't provide us the flexibility we need, as they introduce untoward effects to game balance elsewhere. There are also imbalances in the one-hander and two-hander specs, which are difficult to balance under such a near-binary system. The proposed solutions for fixing that while keeping the current system (e.g. making certain modifiers continue to give wounds for 2-handers only) introduces inelegance and inconsistency, and potentially won't even solve the underlying issues. The idea of a broader wounding system is a time-tested one that worked. Expanding wounding as proposed in solutions 1 or 2 will allow us to find the perfect sweet spot for ice balance, and get us on the way to making warriors great again. ---on 3/8 @ 21:20 writes: Supported, agree on the point of expansion.